Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works eBook

“Dear me,” said Mr. Lavender, as with
a certain dignity they both rose to their full height,
“I had no conception——­”

Without a word, the young woman put her hand up to
her back hair, sidled swiftly down the row of chairs,
ran down the aisle, and vanished. There was no
one else in the chapel. Mr. Lavender, after surveying
the considerable wreckage, made his way to the door
and passed out into the night. “Like a
dream,” he thought; “but I have done my
duty, for no meeting was ever more completely broken
up. With a clear conscience and a good appetite
I can how go home.”

XII

SPEEDS UP TRANSPORT, AND SEES A DOCTOR

Greatly cheered by his success at the Peace meeting,
Mr. Lavender searched his papers next morning to find
a new field for his activities; nor had he to read
far before he came on this paragraph:

“Everything is dependent on
transport, and we cannot sufficiently
urge that this should be speeded
up by
every means in our power.”

“How true!” he thought. And, finishing
his breakfast hastily, he went out with Blink to think
over what he could do to help. “I can exhort,”
he mused, “anyone engaged in transport who is
not exerting himself to the utmost. It will not
be pleasant to do so, for it will certainly provoke
much ill-feeling. I must not, however, be deterred
by that, for it is the daily concomitant of public
life, and hard words break no bones, as they say,
but rather serve to thicken the skins and sharpen the
tongues of us public men, so that, we are able to
meet our opponents with their own weapons. I
perceive before me, indeed, a liberal education in
just those public qualities wherein I am conscious
of being as yet deficient.” And his heart
sank within him, thinking of the carts on the hills
of Hampstead and the boys who drove them. “What
is lacking to them,” he mused, “is the
power of seeing this problem steadily and seeing it
whole. Let me endeavour to impart this habit
to all who have any connection with transport.”

He had just completed this reflection when, turning
a corner, he came on a large van standing stockstill
at the top of an incline. The driver was leaning
idly against the hind wheel filling a pipe. Mr.
Lavender glanced at the near horse, and seeing that
he was not distressed, he thus addressed the man:

“Do you not know, my friend, that every minute
is of importance in this national crisis? If
I could get you to see the question of transport steadily,
and to see it whole, I feel convinced that you would
not be standing there lighting your pipe when perhaps
this half-hour’s delay in the delivery of your
goods may mean the death of one of your comrades at
the front.”

The man, who was wizened, weathered, and old, with
but few teeth, looked up at him from above the curved
hands with which he was coaxing the flame of a match
into the bowl of his pipe. His brow was wrinkled,
and moisture stood at the comers of his eyes.